The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [215]
THURSDAY NEXT,
The Jurisfiction Chronicles
OUTSIDE THE ROOM, Snell tipped his hat and vanished off to represent a client currently languishing in debtor’s prison. The day was overcast yet mild. I leaned on the balcony and looked down into the yard below at the children playing.
“So!” said Havisham. “On with your training now that hurdle is over. The Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale begins at midday and I’m in the mood for a bit of bargain-hunting. Take me there.”
“How?”
“Use your head, girl!” replied Havisham sternly as she grabbed her walking stick and thrashed it through the air a few times. “Come, come! If you can’t jump me straight there, then take me to your apartment and we’ll drive—but hurry. The Red Queen is ahead of us and there is a boxed set of novels that she is particularly keen to get her hands on—we must get there first!”
“I’m sorry—” I stammered. “I can’t—”
“No such word as can’t!” exploded Miss Havisham. “Use the book, girl, use the book!”
Suddenly, I understood. I took the leather-bound Jurisfiction book from my pocket and opened it. The first page, the one I had read already, was of the Great Library. On the second page there was a passage from Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and on the third a detailed description of my apartment back at Swindon—it was good, too, right down to the water stains on the kitchen ceiling and the magazines stuffed under the sofa. The rest of the pages were covered with closely printed rules and regulations, hints and tips, advice and places to avoid. There were illustrations, too, and maps quite unlike any I had seen before. There were, in fact, far more pages in the book than could possibly be fitted within the covers.
“Well?” said Havisham impatiently. “Are we going?”
I flicked to the page that held the short description of my apartment in Swindon. I started to read and felt Havisham’s bony hand hang on to my elbow as the Prague rooftops and aging tenement buildings faded out and my own apartment hove into view.
“Ah!” said Havisham, looking around at the small kitchen with a contemptuous air. “And this is what you call home?”
“At the moment. My husband—”
“The one who you’re not sure is alive or dead or married to you or not?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, “that one.”
She smiled at this and added with a baleful stare: “You wouldn’t have an ulterior motive for joining me, would you?”
“No,” I lied.
“Didn’t come to do something else?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Not some sort of book privateer or something, out for riches and adventure?”
I shook my head. Doing what I was doing for Landen might not have sat too well with Havisham, so I decided to keep myself to myself.
“You’re lying about something,” she announced slowly, “but about what I’m not so sure. Children are such consummate liars. Have your servants recently left you?”
She was staring at the dirty dishes.
“Yes,” I lied again, not so keen on her disparagement anymore. “Domestic service is a tricky issue in 1985.”
“It’s no bed of roses in the nineteenth century either,” Miss Havisham replied, leaning on the kitchen table to steady herself. “I find a good servant but they never stay. It’s the lure of them, you know—the liars, the evil ones.”
“Evil ones?”
“Men!” hissed Havisham contemptuously. “The lying sex. Mark my words, child, for no good will ever come of you if you succumb to their charms—and they have the charms of a snake, believe me!”
“I’ll try to keep on my toes,” I told her.
“And your chastity firmly guarded,” she told me sternly.
“Goes without saying.”
“Good. Can I borrow that jacket?”
She was pointing at Miles Hawke’s Swindon Mallets jacket. Without waiting for a reply she put it on and replaced her veil with a SpecOps cap. Satisfied, she asked: “Is this the way out?”
“No, that’s the broom cupboard. This is the way out over here.”
We opened the door to find my landlord with his fist raised ready to knock.
“Ah!” he said in a low